Face It, Tiger: Are We Having Fun Yet?

Reflecting on San Diego, Andrew Wheeler asks, if misery loves company, why is the comics audience shrinking? Based on current evidence, aren't we miserable enough by now?
30 July 2001

The Ninth Art editorial board (Alasdair, Antony and I) is just back from a holiday to the states. Our principal reason for visiting was the San Diego comic con, but before we got there we spent a week enduring the intense heat of New Orleans, a city proudly boasting the motto-come-T-shirt slogan, "Laissez les bon temps rouler". Let the good times roll.

And roll they did. I won't bore you with the slide show, but we did all the touristy stuff one is meant to do - graveyard tour, ghost tour, swamp tour, drinking in Lafitte's, drinking in the Maison Bourbon, drinking in the street - and indulged ourselves to the brim in fine foods, sugary pastries and brilliantly coloured alcohol. In fact, in our final couple of days, as we rushed to do all those things we'd not yet fit in, a feeling came over me that I didn't want to move on.

It's usual in a holiday to feel you don't want to go home, but in this instance I just didn't want to do the next bit of the holiday. Why go from all the exuberant good nature of New Orleans to the sweat and stress of the comics industry? Why leave the Big Easy for something so small and difficult?

Half way through the holiday I'd made a five-minute visit to an online comic community, and all the petty nastiness and self-importance just knocked the wind out of my sails. This is an industry where the response to "let the good times roll" is invariably, "what good times?" This is a glass-half-empty house. It haunted me.

I was in a place where I could make a huge six dollar daiquiri last for hours while I listened to some brilliantly incoherent pianist choke his way through 'House of the Rising Sun'. I was in a place where I could enjoy some of the best pizza, some of the best steak and certainly some of the best beer-battered alligator ever tasted, all within the same few blocks. I was in a place where the history, spirit and alcohol inspired me to want to write again. Why the hell was I going to waste four days getting the joie de vivre kicked out of me by overgrown bickering kids?

By the time we reached the con, I still didn't have an answer, except that my plane ticket took me home via San Diego, so I really had to be there whether I liked it or not. Still, within hours of arriving in California, I was eating dinner with the Sequential Tarts, women of such boundless energy that I couldn't find time to be miserable. For the next five days I was so busy bouncing from one person to the next that I never quite regained my footing. And I had fun. I kept good company. It was great, and I don't regret a minute of it.

Yet there were reminders along the way of how depressing this industry can be. Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada looked about four-fifths dead. Everywhere he went, people whispered about his unhealthy pallor and worried that he would be found face down in his own urine in the men's stalls. He was always in conversation, always with the same slightly pained expression on his face. The one time I saw him smile, it looked like a wince. Here's a man who's not enjoying the industry anymore, I thought.

And then there was Chris Claremont, whom I've encountered once before at the Marvel Bullpen back in 1998. Back then, when I was sitting in the lobby waiting to talk to Larry Hama, he wandered out of the offices, stopped to sneer sideways at me as if I'd just let loose with a vinegary belch, then wandered back in again. I was glad to note at the con that this expression was not unique to me. Claremont sneered like this at everyone. He wandered around the hotel bar with no apparent destination in mind, as if he hoped to get recognised, and sneered at everyone he passed. Here's a man whom the industry doesn't enjoy anymore, I thought.

And there was the hopeless look on the faces of the self-publishers and the experienced indies. The forlorn expression of people who have pushed themselves past the brink of exhaustion and seen no reward - an expression that is quickly buried by huckster cries and a desperate pimping grin whenever someone passes by on their way to the pretzel stand. The people who come in costumes may be sad and delusional, but at least they're really smiling. The people who hope to break through - or break even - with their often-heartfelt contributions to the industry are sad, delusional and cry themselves to sleep. They could snap at any minute. They could come back next year in costumes.

It seems what fun I had was in spite of comics, not because of them.

The silly thing is, it's not the comics that get me down. I quite unashamedly and unabashedly adore comics. I went around collecting sketches from wonderful folk like Jill Thompson, Mike Kunkel and Chris Sprouse with glee, and left each one of them with a goofy smile on my face. I have one of Kunkel's Herobear beanies sitting on my computer right now, and it gives me that same goofy smile every time I look at it. There's nothing wrong with comics.

The thing that you'll always hear, though, is that there's something wrong with the industry. And there's a list of things wrong with it, to do with rights and retail and reaching an audience, and I don't tend to write about them, because there's other columnists better disposed toward it, who are doing it better than I could, and who got there first. My column is more personal than that. And personally, I'm finding the animosity that pervades the industry a little tiring. And I'm not even in it. No wonder Joe Quesada looks like he's on the wrong side of a requiem mass.

I want to say, "Why can't we all just get along?" And I know that's a daft request, but then I also know half the ranting and nastiness that goes on in this industry is just thinly disguised self-promotion. And I know much of the unpleasantness we see is just the sort of cannibalism that happens whenever the food looks like running out, but people seem to see cannibalism as the first resort here, not the last. So long as we're all just pissing on the other guy, we're all going to come out of this smelling like piss.

I'm all in favour of dissenting opinions - I wouldn't be here otherwise - and I'm not saying we shouldn't fight our corners, I just don't think many of us are picking our fights any more. Worse, most folk seem to think they can win a fight by insulting their opponent and getting a laugh. We need more respect, more patience, and more generosity in this miserable backwater of the entertainment media. This was supposed to be fun, damn it. Sneering superiority isn't getting us anywhere, and none of us has all the answers. Not even you.

No wonder we can't bring new readers into the medium. Look at us. We're not fit to be seen in company.

If you haven't read last month's column on homosexuality and representation yet, please do. All feedback is appreciated. I'll be writing the follow-up in due course, but it's not something I want to rush.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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